


A Thousand Bullets

by LadyBraken



Category: Chernobyl (TV 2019)
Genre: Angst, Canonical Character Death, Canonical Pain, Leonid gets a hug, Leonid needs a hug, M/M, lots of them - Freeform, radiations, river of tears
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-04
Updated: 2019-07-04
Packaged: 2020-06-03 21:42:18
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,372
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19472773
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyBraken/pseuds/LadyBraken
Summary: Since the very moment Proskuryakov had entered, Sasha knew. It wasn’t conscious knowledge, not even a real thought crossing his mind. The ground had shook, the reactor screamed, and there is no core-His body seemed to react on his own. His mind was out of it. He couldn’t think about it, he couldn’t believe it. From saying he couldn’t think at all, there was only a step that Dyatlov would take at one point or another, no doubt.They were alone in the control room. He and Sasha, standing in front of the panel.Leonid's hands were trembling.





	A Thousand Bullets

**Author's Note:**

> I'm not even sorry for the AZ 5 of your feelings. Thank you to (both) my betas for the amazing job!

Since the very moment Proskuryakov had entered, Sasha knew. It wasn’t conscious knowledge, not even a real thought crossing his mind. The ground had shook, the reactor screamed, and  _ there is no core _ -

His body seemed to react on his own. His mind was out of it. He couldn’t think about it, he couldn’t believe  _ it _ . From saying he couldn’t think at all, there was only a step that Dyatlov would take at one point or another, no doubt. 

They were alone in the control room. He and Sasha, standing in front of the panel. 

Leonid's hands were trembling. 

And maybe it was the worst thing of it all. Sasha walked discreetly over him, it was only a step, after all, under the pretext of looking at - whatever was still working on the control panel. He got so close that their fingers brushed. Leonid looked up with panic. They couldn’t touch, not here, not when someone else was in the room.

Sasha had never wanted to take Leonid in his arms so much.  _ Lonya. _ Instead, he leaned a bit forwards, until their shoulders touch, warm, grounding.

_ I am here. I got you.  _

“What about the auxiliary?”

Stolyarchuk shook his head. No. _No._ The word echoed in Sasha’s mind like a rock thrown in an empty core. 

“The pumps are gone. The electrical’s gone.”

He felt Leonid press himself against him, as if he would drop on the floor otherwise - dead, burned. Sasha shouldn't think about it,  _ he couldn’t think about it  _ \- “The core?” Leonid asked, voice shaking.

Silence. Stolyarchuk gulped, and looked at Sasha instead, as if he couldn’t bear to tell young Leonid the truth directly. “I didn't go there. And I won't .”

The blood in Sasha’s veins turned to ice as the silence screamed with the rasping of dying metal, like an enormous boat as it it sinks into the sea. 

“I  think it's time we face--”

Lonya’s eyes were wide, and Sasha couldn’t hear any more of it.

“No.” He had to do something, it couldn’t have happened, they couldn’t die here. They couldn’t, not he, not his colleagues, and certainly not Lonya, young, beautiful Lonya who had just started this job, who had just started his life, and who could smile in a way that made Sasha want to hold him and never let go. Lonya, who was looking at him with wide, fearful eyes, like the first time they had kissed, like that day his father had almost caught them. “ We need water in the core or there's a risk of a meltdown. We have to open the valves.” 

His voice sounded cold, even to his own ears. 

“Sasha -” Stolyarchuk pleaded, and it somehow enraged him. 

“What is it you want, Boris? If it's true, then we're all dead. A million people are dead. Is that what you need to hear?”

There was a silence. The silence was a void, and everything Sasha had refused to think until now came rushing into his mind. He could feel his head thrumming, the metallic taste on his tongue, the burns on his skin.

“We'll open the valves by hand, ” he said.  _ We’re already dead. Please make it so we aren’t already dead. We’re already dead. Please- _

“By hand? The number of valves… the amount of time to turn them...you're talking about  **_hours_ ** in there!”

“Then help us.”

“Help you do what? Pump water into a ditch? There’s  **_nothing_ ** there!” He shouted. Sasha had never seen him like this. He turned to Toptunov.

“Leonid-- I'm begging you.”

Leonid turned slightly to look at Sasha, lowering his eyes. 

\----

It had been a strange day, the first time Sasha saw Leonid. A day like any other, in many ways, except for small things. His cat refused to eat, the bus was early, a bird almost flew into his head. There was a  _ boy _ in his control room. 

Of course, Sasha knew that there would be a new recruit. He simply hadn’t imagined him to be this  _ young _ . 

The poor boy was trembling, looking at the control panel as if the thing could jump at his throat at any moment. He was a pale boy, with large, impossibly blue eyes and some hair on the upper lip in a weak attempt at a mustache. 

Sasha coughed to announce his arrival. The boy jumped out of his seat. Sasha smiled indulgently when the boy started to sputter out apologies. He offered his hand. “Alexsandr Fedorivich.” he said, “I’m the night shift supervisor.” The boy took his hand. Leonid Toptunov, he mumbled, but there was relief in his voice.

“ Are you alright here?” he asked softly. There was no need to humiliate the poor boy in front of their colleagues. 

“I- I’m not sure.” Toptunov said, his hand raised above the control panel as if trying to smooth it down. 

Sasha smiled softly and clasped Toptunov’s wrist. “It’s alright, we’ll do this together.”

Toptunov’s smile made something warm grow in his belly.

\---

The door closed behind them.

Sasha turned towards Leonid. The younger man’s eyes were widened in horror...

No one could see them here. 

Sasha grabbed Lonya by the shoulders and pulled him in a tight hug. Lonya’s head fell on his clavicle , tucked under his chin, just as it should be. 

Sasha looked in front of him. Through the windows he could see the fire. He could see the dark things on the ground, scattered around everywhere. Black.

_ Graphite _ . 

Sasha held Leonid tighter, so he wouldn’t turn around. So he wouldn’t see; wouldn’t have to see..

\---

During the whole week, Sasha sat next to Toptunov with the instruction manual, and showed him everything he could. 

The young man was surprisingly bright behind his shy attitude. He listened dutifully and literally  _ soaked  _ up the information. In a short time, he had become a bit more independent, but that didn’t stop Sasha from standing next to him every time, to ground him. At first, he had only been standing there, talking softly. As the days went by, he stood closer, eventually dared to put his hand on Toptunov’s shoulder.

He didn’t do it on purpose, of course, and no one thought anything of it. 

That was, until Toptunov fell asleep on the bus. It had been a long night. The reactor always needed attention, and their superiors breathing over their backs. Sasha had been so occupied looking after himself that he barely had had the time to guide Toptunov, and the poor boy had had to fend for himself. 

At least, now,the shift was over. 

Toptunov’s head had dropped sideway and rested on Sasha’s shoulder. At first, Sasha had tensed, then, before he realized that the bus was empty, and it was late - well, early. Leonid looked peaceful in his sleep. His blond hair was falling in thin locks across Sasha’s shoulder, his mouth hanging slightly open. 

Warmth spread in Sasha’s belly. 

Slowly, not to disturb the young man, he moved his arm and draped it around Toptunov’s shoulder.

Just before Toptunov got off the bus, he whispered something that put a new sun in Sasha’s sky. 

“Call me Leonid, please. We are friends, no?”

Sasha had grinned like an idiot for all the rest of the ride. 

\---

Down the stairs, there was water. 

Sasha knew, he  _ knew _ what it meant They were doomed. The second the ground had shook, they were doomed. Each second they had passed in there had taken years of their lives, each moment they had walked on to get there had destroyed their bodies. 

Leonid was twenty-five, and in a few days- 

No. It couldn’t be because if it was, then Sasha’s heart would break and he would hurt so much that he would drop dead then and now. He would leave Lonya alone in the contaminated room, crying, terrified, not knowing the gruesome end that would fall on him far too soon. 

Dyatlov was right. It wasn’t. It wasn’t. 

Sasha passed beyond fear. 

Their feet touched the cold water, then their leg, then their knees. Sasha took Lonya’s hand. To stabilise him, yes. To feel his warmth, his life, the blood thrumming under his skin, too. 

To stop him from falling into contaminated water, even if it didn’t change anything. 

He saw water pipes, and dozen of valves, and it felt like they were being buried alive. 

\---

Sasha had invited Leonid for a drink at home. They often did this these days. 

It was one month after their meeting. 

The first time he had visited him, Leonid had seemed a bit scared. Awkward. But after a few glasses of vodka, it passed. His cheeks became flushed red and his eyes twinkled, His laugh had made the corner of his eye wrinkle, and Leonid had wanted to keep this image behind his eyes forever. 

Afternoons like this happened more and more often. Leonid would come for a drink before going to work. Sometimes, they would go outside, talk to the neighbours, play with Stolyarchuk’s kid. Sometimes, like now, they would stay in Sasha’s living room, their faces basking in the summer’s sun. The radio playing whatever music in the background.

They didn’t talk. It was companionable. 

Sasha wished the chairs were closer.

Leonid was calm, and it was a rare occurrence. Sasha was happy for it. The young man would get grey hair before him if he continued like that. 

They talked a bit, and laughed, and joked. 

When they went to the door, Leonid suddenly hugged him. “Thank you, Alexandr.” he whispered. For a second, in surprise, Sasha didn’t move, and he felt Leonid tense under him. 

But it was only a moment before he wrapped his arms around the younger man. “You’re welcome, Lonya.” He said, and if he kissed the crown of Lonya’s head. Well, there was no one to see. 

\---

“Okay. Let's begin.” Sasha whispered. He moved ahead, the water - _ cold, deadly - _ giving way to his legs as he walked. He looked at the valves. 

Lonya hadn’t moved. He was standing, alone, half in the water. Alone, in the dark room, sacred so much his hand had stopped trembling and stayed clasped in a painful grin on his sleeves. 

“Leonid.” Sasha said softly. The young man nodded, and Sasha wanted to cry. He turned towards the valves, so Lonya wouldn’t see him. Wouldn’t see his face; Wouldn’t see the truth.

Right. 

Lonya joined him at the standpipes. Sasha wanted to tell him to stop. Not to touch the metal. To get out of here, to run for his life, because if they didn’t die of radiation exposure, they would die from a bullet. 

They each took a valve and tried to turn it. .

  
  


The valves were tight. They struggled to make them move at all.

“All the way, okay? All the way open.”

There was no sound in the room. No sound but the awful, distant hissing of the reactor. The metallic squeal of the valves. 

And the wet sound of Lonya’s sobs. 

\---

Lonya was looking at him  _ like that _ . He often did it these days, and it made Sasha all hot and bothered, but also afraid. So, so afraid that someone would see and understand. 

The one saw. No one knew. A young man admired his mentor, his boss, the engineer that had taken him under his wing. So far it was nothing out of the ordinary. 

And, well, it wasn’t a lie. 

The sun hadn’t risen yet. The streets were empty, only lightened by a few lamp posts. Sasha and Leonid walked so close their finger brushed together. When the building disappeared, Sasha extended a finger and pulled Lonya’s hand in his. 

The younger man didn’t react outwardly, but there was a soft smile at the corner of his mouth. They arrived at Sasha’s apartment. Normally, Lonya would have gone home. Sasha opened the door and, after a questioning glance, tugged him inside.

Sasha stared at the young man, and then, tentatively, took his hand and kissed his knuckles, his fingers, his palm. 

Lonya’s cheeks were flushed red, his eyes glazing, his mouth parted. 

It was more that Sasha could bear.

He cupped Lonya’s face, and slowly, tenderly, almost chastely, he kissed him. 

He learned later that it had been Lonya’s first kiss. It made something akin to pride roar inside him. 

When the kiss stopped, Lonya looked scared. Scared shitless, and Sasha only wanted to bury him in a hug and never let him see the light of the day after. “It’ll be alright” he whispered. 

Sasha looked at Lonya in a way no one had done before. His hands brushed the young man’s neck, his jaw. His hands slid underneath Lonya’s cloak, and it fell on the ground. 

Lonya smiled, and Sasha kissed him again. 

\---

The metal of the valves was burning cold, and Sasha knew his hands would we scorched by the end of this. 

“I'm sorry.”

He jumped in surprise, and gripped the valve. “There's nothing to be sorry for. I told you-- we did nothing wrong.”

“But we did.”

Sasha stopped turning his valve. Didn’t answer. Didn’t look at Lonya - couldn’t bear it. He just stood quietly for a second.

_ Fuck it _ . 

Sasha left the valve and in a jump, he was pulling Lonya into the tightest hug. The younger man was trembling, sobbing. Sasha caressed his forearms, holding him tucked against him own body, kissing his neck, his cheeks, his shoulders, everything he could reach. It was strange, like this, because Lonya had a head on him, but it didn’t matter. The young man lower his brow in the valve and Sasha wanted to scream  _ don’t do that it’ll burn you _ , but it didn’t matter either. 

Sasha held him upright by sheer will. 

He cried, but his tears, just like their lives, lost themselves in the contaminated water. 

\---

In the morning, when Sasha woke, Leonid was sleeping, languorous and warm beside him. They had fallen asleep like that, Lonya’s head on Sasha's heart, his limbs curled up around him.

Sasha caressed Lonya’s hair softly, listening to his breath. He took the younger man’s hand, and kissed his knuckles. 

He wished they couldn’t stay like that forever. 

\---

Help came, unknowing and too late. They were lifted on stretchers, driven to the hospital. Sasha’s hands were red, and his eyes were empty. 

He could hear Lonya screaming his name.

\---

The sun was warm. 

It was a beautiful day, and the sunrays touched his skin deliciously. It made him smile softly. 

In his kitchen, Lonya was sitting, bathing in the light. Sasha lifted Leonid’s hand to his lips and kissed his knuckles, as he always did. “Alright, there?”

Lonya leaned forwards and captured his mouth in a searing kiss. “Never better.” 

\---

Sasha was lying in his bed. The pain had been overwhelming, but now, it was somehow gone. 

A temporary relief, one of the doctors had assured him. 

He closed his eyes. 

He had been in this room since - he didn’t know for how long. The air still tasted like metal, or maybe it was his tongue. He felt weak, asif his own skin was just waiting to melt. 

He had on good authority that it was. 

Sasha propped himself up on his elbows. There was something wrong, something that stopped him from falling into a blissful sleep. 

A cry. 

He would have recognised it in the middle of a crowd. 

He had heard some animals could do that - and mothers too, sometimes. He didn’t care. He knew the sound of these sobs because they were digging a hole in his stomach every time he heard them. 

Sasha rose on his feet with difficulty. 

The world was spinning around him, and he opened his arms to hold his balance. He rushed to take a flowerpot and puked into it. 

Getting up really had been a bad idea. 

Another sob had him moving before his mind even caught up. He fell forwards more than he walked, but he managed to get to the door without further injury. 

The soles of his feet felt like they would melt at any moment. 

There was no one in the corridor. Sasha didn’t know if he was relieved that their task was easier or worried that they all had given up on them. He followed the noise of the sobs echoing against the white tiles. 

He pushed one on the door, poking his head inside. 

There was a bed in the middle of the room. One bed, and nothing around but a cage of plastic. A vague shape was blurring behind it. Moving in small tremors, whimpering.

_ Lonya. _

\---

“Maybe I will take your position, old man.” Leonid said with a minxy smile. 

“Oh, we are being cheeky today, I see!”

“There’s no cheek in saying the truth.”

“I’ll show you the truth!”

With a big push, Leonid was thrown on the bed, Sasha over him. His hand went for the young man’s sides, pocking him.

“You wouldn’t dare!”

Sasha only rose an eyebrow before proceeding in his tickling attack. Lonya jumped and laughed and cried until he begged for mercy, his breathing quick and a smile on the corners of his lips. 

“Have you no love for me, oh mean assaillant?” he asked in mocked hurt. 

Sasha smiled softly. “I shall then prove my love to you, Lonya.” He leaned forwards and pecked Leonid’s lips. “One kiss.”, again, “two kisses.”, and then proceeded to kiss every inch of skin he could find. “A thousand kisses!” he claimed, and Lonya laughed. 

_ \--- _

Sasha walked quietly, slowly towards the shape. The dread in his body was burning hotter than the radiation, because the sobs were becoming louder, because the smell was stronger, because he could see  _ red _ . 

He pushed the plastic protection aside. 

Lonya wasn’t hurt much.  _ Yet _ . His hands, however… The skin had melted, leaving behind only raw flesh oozing with blood and other things Sasha wished he had never had to see. Lonya beautiful, long, thin hands - the hands of a pianists, skilled and strong, Sasha had loved to kiss them so much - were reduced to a mass of flesh falling apart from the rest of his body. 

Sasha wanted to scream. 

Lonya was crying, eyes closed. He must have heard Sasha’s breath hitch, because his eyes opened, big and pleading. “Sasha-” he whispered, and in a jump, Sasha was sitting next to him, his hand on the younger man’s cheek. Never had Lonya look more than a child. His voice was high and raw, as if speaking.hurt. 

It probably did. 

“Shh, shh.” hushed Sasha. “Rest, now. It’s alright.” Lonya’s destroyed hand rose to grip Sasha’s forearm, and the man winced at the squishy sound the flesh made. He laid himself next to Lonya on the bed, taking care not to move him so much. “I’m here, Lonya. I hold you, can you feel me?”

“I- I can. You’re really here.” whispered the young man, and it hurt to think that he had been thinking he’d die alone. 

“Yes, yes of course. I won’t go, I promise.”

He must have had fallen asleep, because the next time he opened his eyes, a nurse was coming in the room. She looked at them and pinched her lips. 

“You can’t be here. You must return to your own bed.”

“I can’t leave him alone.” He said, and it was a promise. 

“It’s for you own safety.”

He saw red. His safety? How could she talk about his safety, she who was whole and sane, she who had years in front of her, and not days, hours?

“I’m contaminated too! Come on, he’s a child! I won’t let him die alone, I won’t go.”

As if on cue, Lonya started whimpering and clunshed harder to Sasha’s arm. 

Something softer passed in the woman’s eyes. “Alright.” she whispered, and she was gone. She came back with other nurses and a bed. They put it just next to Lonya’s one, and left them. 

The next hours went without much change for Lonya. Sasha was feeling sicker and sicker. He could feel it, everytime he closed his eyes, the atoms of his body leaving him, like little islands floating away from the continent. The place were Lonya had gripped him felt like an enormous bruise, but he didn’t move. 

It was when the sun rose that things started to go bad. 

Lonya started to trash around, screaming.

“It hurts! It hurts Sasha please!”

No one came. Sasha rushed out of his bed, but his legs buckled under him. He fell painfully on the floor. Lonya’s screams echoed against his skull. He crawled for what seemed like hours until his hand fell on the metallic bars of the mechanism under the bed. He pushed himself up until he was half on Lonya’s bed, his hand gripping him, passing through his falling hair - oh  _ God _ \- he was coughing blood  _ no no no no no- _

“Sasha, please! I don’t want to hurt!”

“It’s ok, it’ll be ok. Breathe through me, alright. Here, together. We’ll breathe together, yes?” Sasha put their joined hand on his chest. His movement was slow, tender, but his breath came frantically. There were tears at the corner of his eyes, and he was surprised to see pink dots on the covers. “Here, just like me. In, out. Just- just breathe, I’m begging you,  _ breathe…” _

Lonya screamed through the night, and screamed and screamed until his voice broke, until the nurses took his clothes off him because the burnt were extending, until Sasha’s own skin started to melt and fall. 

That night, when Sasha puked blood and gore, he cried. He didn’t know why Lonya was dying sooner than him. Maybe because he was younger, smaller. Maybe because he had touched something more contaminated. 

A few hours later, Sasha couldn’t move much without pain, and he knew he was going through what had happened to Lonya only two days ago. Near him, Lonya wasn't sobbing anymore. He didn’t have the strength. 

Sasha would have given everything for a bullet. Two. A thousand of them.

\---

_ The sun was blazing into Lonya’s eyes. Pale blue, like the first snow in winster, like watery ice of the arctic’s rivers, like the sky in the morning. A small mole at the side of his mouth, rising up in a smile- _

The fever woke him and made him sleep, yet it was always night. Rough breaths,  _ please stop, please let me die - _

_ The feel of his soft skin under a finger, the glimmer of anger in his eyes, sometimes, pressing their legs together, a soft music- _

He wouldn’t see the sun again, he didn’t want to see it, the sun hurt-

_ They were basking in the afternoon- _

No, he couldn’t sleep, he had to rise. He had to move. The dreams were so sweet, but Lonya was hurt, and it had to stop.  _ It had to stop. _

**_A bullet, a bullet, a bullet-_ **

_ I love you, you know, whispered in a pillow, in a soft morning, in a breath- _

His feet were being destroyed by his own weight, and he was somehow passed pain. He walked, a step, another. He couldn’t see more that a few shapes, but the walked and walked and walked. 

_ It’ll be alright, Lonya. They won’t bother you long, and I’ll protect you- _

He shook his head and moved forward. 

He would not find a bullet. He would not be able to fire a gun, nor to even aim it. 

He found a knife.

Oh, maybe it wasn’t a knife. It was sharp, metallic, it was the only thing he needed. It almost fell off his hand - whatever was left of his hand- many times before he managed to get back to Lonya’s bed. 

“Sasha…” wheezed Leonid. 

Sasha let himself drop on the mattress and cried out of pain. “Hurt…” whispered Lonya. 

Sasha draped his arm around Lonya’s chest and tucked him in a the way he always did when the fell asleep together. It hurt,  _ it hurt _ , but he had too do it.

“It’s okay,” he said, and his tongue felt like burning sand in his mouth “ You breath with my Lonya. Here, do you feel it?”

“I can’t - I don’t feel, Sasha. I can’t feel anything anymore.”

A sob tore itself out of Sasha's chest, and it turned into a couched. Blood fell from his lip, but he didn’t bother wiping it out. 

“I’m here, and I love you, Lonya. I’m so, so sorry and I love you so, so much.” he said. He pressed his lips on Lonya’s burnt cheek. He didn’t have the strength to be delicate. “Here, one kiss…”

He gripped the blade in his fist and ran it down Lonya’s forearm. He didn’t know if Lonya could feel that, but he hoped not. There was blood, he could feel it - hot, wet - but he didn’t look down. He couldn’t look much at anything, anyway.

If only he had a bullet.

He closed his eyes, and behind his eyelid, Lonya was warm, soft and happy. His skin unblemished, blushing, his gaze on him. The blade became a caress, a simple, soft caress on his arm like the ones they managed to do even in public, as comfort, as proof that  _ they were together _ .

“Two kisses…” he said again, and the blade- and he caressed Lonya’s other forearm. 

He hugged Lonya tighter because he always felt the need to protect him, even if Lonya could show fore, even if he was a grown man in his own right. And that’s what he was doing, protecting him, hugging him. 

“A thousand kisses…” rasped Lonya, and -  _ no, no, no ,no nonono-  _ it was weak and peaceful, and it hurt so, so bad. 

“Yes.” he didn’t know if he was laughing or sobbing, or not moving at all, because he had passed a sharp, painful caress on his own arms. “A thousand kisses, Lonya. Don’t worry - don’t- it’s ok. Toge- together, yes?”

Lonya had stopped moving, and Sasha clutched him tighter. He closed his eyes, and behind his eyelids, Lonya was smiling, happy, and his hand was holding Leonid’s. 

He pushed a last breath out of his body. It almost sounded like a word, for no one to hear.

_ Together. _


End file.
